We on the platform can't do much.

It ain't in our line, you see; but in the goods department, where they are constant with vans and wagons and such like, they are likely enough to hear of something before long." That night, thinking matters over in bed, Frank determined to go down to the docks and see if he could get a place as cabin boy.

He had had this idea in his mind ever since he lost his money, and had only put it aside in order that he might, if possible, get some berth on shore which might seem likely in the end to afford him a means of making his way up again.
It was not that he was afraid of the roughness of a cabin boy's life; it was only because he knew that it would be so very long before, working his way up from boy to able bodied seaman, he could obtain a mate's certificate, and so make a first step up the ladder.

However, he thought that even this would be better than going as a wagoner's boy, and he accordingly crossed London Bridge, turned down Eastcheap, and presently found himself in Ratcliff Highway.

He was amused here at the nautical character of the shops, and presently found himself staring into a window full of foreign birds, for the most part alive in cages, among which, however, were a few cases of stuffed birds.
"How stupid I have been!" he thought to himself.